Between Film & Art: Navigating Two Industries as an Artist-Filmmaker

This session explores what it looks like to build a sustainable practice across both the film industry and the contemporary art world. What are the real benefits, and challenges, of trying to work in both?

In this session artist-filmmaker Amber Akaunu shares honest, practical reflections on navigating film and art as overlapping, but often very different, industries. Drawing on her own experience working with galleries, social platforms, broadcasters, and festivals, Amber talks through how artist-filmmakers can move between these spaces without compromising their ideas, values, or creative voice.

In 2025, Amber directed Dear Othermother, funded by BFI Doc Society and Liverpool Biennial, and exhibited at Bluecoat Gallery. She’ll walk through how she got there from early ideas and development programmes to pitching the work to organisations such as the BBC and The Guardian.

This session is aimed at emerging and early-career creatives working across moving image, documentary, and visual art, or anyone curious about how to bridge the film and art worlds with more confidence and clarity.

About Amber Akaunu

Amber Akaunu is a Liverpool-born filmmaker working across art and cinema to document and animate Black regional stories. Her work has previously exhibited at Iniva (Can Publications be Porous?, 2023) and screened at festivals including London Short Film Festival (LSFF x T A P E Collective: Bonded 3.0, 2024).

Amber’s recent film, Dear Othemother, was commissioned and exhibited as part of Liverpool Biennial 2025, with funding from BFI Doc Society. The film is her personal take on single motherhood, friendship and matriarchal connectivity in Liverpool 8, one of the UK’s oldest Black communities and where Amber is from. Dear Othermother was highlighted by Harper’s Bazaar, naming Amber as “one of the brightest stars of the festival”.

Amber holds a BA in Fine Art and an MA in Filmmaking, and was awarded the BAFTA Kirsh scholarship for her postgraduate studies at Goldsmiths. She currently lives between Liverpool and London where she works for the National Gallery as a Video Producer.

Pricing

This event is free for members of Creative Kernow Associates. There is a small fee of £5 for non-members, just to cover costs as the event is funded through membership fees. You do not need to live in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly to attend this event as it will take place online (on Zoom).

Creative Kernow Associates membership starts at £5/month: associates.creativekernow.org.uk/membership.

Image: behind the scenes from Dear Othermother, taken by Kolade T Ladipo, courtesy Amber Akaunu